ANU students in Fiji for island sustainability trip

Australian National University students talks at the USP lower campus. Picture: ATU RASEA

TWENTY-one students from the Australian National University are in the country for their island sustainability Fiji field school trip.

Speaking to the Fiji Times, Dr Sera Beavis, the senior lecturer at the Fenner school of environment and society at ANU said the students who were included in the program were from different fields.

“Although many of them are doing environmental studies or environmental science, some of them are also doing law biology, development studies and Pacific studies,” Dr Beavis said.

She said they chose to come to Fiji because they were specifically interested in how islands in the Pacific responded to rapid changes.

“Those changes can be as a result of population growth, environmental pressures associated with climate change and also things like tourism and that’s why we’ve got food security, the need for agriculture to adapt to these rapid changes imposed by more people needing and using those resources but also a higher vulnerability associated with broader global changes,” she said.

The students will be in Fiji for two weeks and have carried out their research on topics such as Tourism, Water management systems, Fisheries and climate change visiting places such as Nataleira village, Levuka and South Seas Islands.